PoolTogether
Basics * Started in 9-2019 * "The pool was originally seeded with $150,000 in sponsored Dai back in late December upon the introduction of MCD." * A no loss lottery powered by DAI and Compound. * PoolTogether is flipping the concept of a lottery, to one where you lose money 99.9% of the time to one where you never lose money, and instead acts as a savings incentive. * It works by pooling all of the lottery ticket sales into one big pool and investing all of that pool into interest-earning assets (a.t.m. lending DAI on Compound), and after a set period, everyone gets their money back - but one person also gets all of the interest. * PoolTogether makes money by directing 10% of the interest accrued to a team DAO. * From this post by Token Tuesdays (22-1-2020): "PoolTogether is non-custodial, meaning users can redeem their tickets from the pool at any time. The value of stablecoins always remains the same, meaning these raffles are truly “no loss lotteries”. Tickets are recycled week after week, meaning once capital has been deposited, users are eligible to win every week until they exit the pool. Let’s take a look at some other notions that make PoolTogether “valuable”: # We’ve seen numerous parties “sponsor” PoolTogether, meaning their funds collect interest, without being eligible to win the drawing. # PoolTogether leverages a Uniswap front-end integration, a notion we’ve been very passionate about recommending for Ethereum products across the board. # The PoolTogether team recently announced their intentions for new features, all of which should gradually increase adoption of the product at large. (described in our conclusion) In summary, PoolTogether allows users to *possibly* earn larger rewards than they would be able to on their own in an intuitive, exciting fashion. To give a clear example, it would take 11.2 years to earn the same amount of interest on 1000 DAI collecting the Dai Savings Rate for the same reward of this week’s prize (~$672)." Usage and Whales * From this post by Token Tuesdays (22-1-2020): "The current prize pool for January 24th, 2020 is by far the largest in PoolTogether’s history. Nearly $500,000 is currently pooled by community members with another $132,000 from sponsored Dai. With that, there are currently 1,253 addresses all hoping to win this week’s pot featuring two major whales. Each of the two major addresses have a 24.88% and 18.69% chance of winning with the next biggest player only having a 3.57% chance. As of writing, contributing 1 DAI will give you a ~0.0002% chance of winning the lottery pool." * From this tweet (27-1-2020): "whales have bulk bought tickets. The top 5 players combined have a 58% chance of being the winner." * From Bitcoin.com (31-1-2020): "Creeping centralization doesn’t just manifest in defi protocols whose creators hold the master keys; it can also be seen in projects such as Pool Together, the lossless lottery platform, where whales have taken over. There is nothing illegal about major players gaming the system, nor does their doing so put user funds at risk. However, it serves to illustrate the ease with which the defi market can be manipulated – and how projects founded with good intentions can be hijacked by monopolies with little interest in fostering financial inclusion." * From Our Network #7 (6-2-2020): "Part of the growth in prize value is due to an increase in unique players (measured by unique Ethereum addresses in the pool). This has been increasing an average of 36% week over week. Part of the growth is also driven by an increase in the average deposit size. The later half of January saw more whales entering the pool driving up the average deposit size. Total pool size broke $1 million Dai for the first time. Of this, ~$778,000 Dai is from player deposits and ~$250,000 Dai is sponsored." Roadmap * From this post by Token Tuesdays (22-1-2020): "Additional Stablecoin Support PoolTogether will soon incorporate prize pools for assets other than DAI including stablecoins like US Dollar Coin (USDC). USDC currently has 4x the market size of DAI, indicating there is a large opportunity for more capital to flow into PoolTogether pools. Similarly, USDC lending rates have been steadily rising, meaning more interest can be collected for prizes. PoolTogether Pods One of the few downsides to PoolTogether is that without significant capital, your chances at winning are fairly low. Pods would aid in this notion by allowing small groups to pool their tickets together, effectively increasing their chances at winning. In the event that a given Pod ticket were to win, the prize would be split pro-rate among all the Pod participants. New Wallet Support While PoolTogether supports most of the major Ethereum wallets (MetaMask, WalletConnect, Portis, Coinbase Wallet and Squarelink), it’s likely that additional wallet support opens new avenues for more pool participation. Similar to what we’re seeing with Multi-Collateral Dai’s integration with secondary exchanges like OKEx, it’s possible (custodian issues aside) that PoolTogether’s contracts *could* be leveraged by larger funds to further increase pool capacity." Team, investors, partners Team * Leighton Cusack — Co-founder and CEO Investors * "The company is announcing (3-2-2020) a $1.05 million investment round under a simple agreement for future equity. IDEO CoLab Ventures led the round; ConsenSys and DTC Capital also invested." Category:Companies/Organisations